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Community Arts Space Open Studio

Sat May 26, 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Part of the Community Arts Space: Recent Histories

This summer, the Gardiner is supporting five arts-based projects as part of the Community Arts Space, presented by TD Bank Group. Visitors will get a rare glimpse into the work and creative processes of these local artists and designers, and will be invited to participate in workshops and other programming mounted in our lobby, Lecture Hall, and Community Clay Studio.

jes sachse is an artist, writer, and curator. Marrying poetry with large-scale sculptural forms, their work address the negotiations of bodies moving in public/private space and the work of their care.

For the Public Space Intervention (July 18 – August 29), which features a socially-engaged installation on the Gardiner’s Outdoor Plaza, sachse will create a series of outdoor sculptures entitled i wanna dance with some body exploring the aesthetics of ramps.

For the Open Studio, sachse will present Micro Comedies, Macro Tragedies in the lobby, a digital work that was commissioned by Trinity Square Video Themed Residency as part of the exhibition Critical Ethics (Summer 2016). The work meditates on the reliance on screen-based technologies to mediate sadness and non-technological perseverance as a means of existing otherwise.

Louis Esmé (Mi’kmaq-Acadian, Irish) is an artist, writer, and illustrator whose social art practice spans over 20 years of grassroots, artist-run and academic spaces. For the Gardiner’s Museum Intervention Project Blood Soaked Soil (August 23-30), Esmé will make seven clay districts for Mi’kmaq Seven Directions in the Gardiner’s Exhibition Hall, Lobby and Permanent Collection that be mounted from August. These objects have been made during a 6-month long Akin Collective studio residency.

Join knowledgeable community members Jodi Lynn Maracle (Kanien’kehá:ka) and Shane H. Camastro (anishinaabe) in this short, interactive workshop on Treaty relationships and responsibilities in Dish with One Spoon Territory. As practicing artists and educators from this place, they will facilitate activities and discussions to root community arts and museum practices in these original agreements.

For their Young People Project (August 2 – 16), design researchers and strategists Calla Lee and Prateeksha Singh will present the discovery of artifacts found during an imagined dig in the year 2050 of the remains of a former Toronto condominium development. Rooted partly in fiction, lived experience, and research of actual contemporary trends and signals, this project involves a series of guided artifact-making workshops with youth from Art Starts. For the Open Studio, visitors will get to play a series of games where they will discover their Time Traveler Profile, imagine objects from 2050, and write a wish list for the future.

Invisible Footprints PanelCo-presented with The 5193 – 4 pm

Invisible Footprints is a series of multi-generational projects that celebrate the history of Toronto’s East and Southeast Asian LGBTQ movements. For the Gardiner’s Visibility and Representation Project (Jul 5 – 19), Invisible Footprints will mount a mixed-media exhibition delving into the personal narratives shared at clay-making and community dialogue workshops for fellow East and Southeast Asian LGBTQ+ communities and their friends that took place at The 519 during the month of May.

This panel, featuring Invisible Footprints artists Aries Cheung, Heidi Cho, and Khanh Tudo alongside co-founder Vince Ha, will discuss Invisible Footprints’ work, in particular the group’s Art and Archive exhibition at OCAD University’s Open Space Gallery in the fall of 2017. Throughout the Open Studio, a display of works by Tudo and Cho will be shown in the lobby.

Panic in the Labyrinth Open Mic4 – 5 pm

Annie Wong is a multidisciplinary artist who uses various forms of participation and social engagement to reimagine performance, installation, and poetry. For her Performance on the Plaza Project, Panic in the Labyrinth, Wong will organize a series of outdoor performances throughout the summer centering on intersectional feminist poetics. As part of the Open Studio, Wong invites women to fill the air of the Museum with feminist voices by reading key texts, poems, and quotes out loud for one hour.

About the Community Arts Space: Recent Histories

Inspired by the transformative aspects of ceramics, both real and metaphorical, the Community Arts Space is the Gardiner’s incubator for arts-based community projects. In collaboration with local artists, designers, and collectives, the Museum will mount five public projects that examine how cultural knowledge is passed on or performed, and the role of the museum in cultivating the so-called lived and living memory.

Presented by

Community Partners

The 519 is committed to the health, happiness, and full participation of the LGBTQ2S community. A City of Toronto agency and a registered charity with an innovative model of Service, Space and Leadership, The 519 strives to make a real difference in people’s lives while working to promote inclusion, understanding, and respect.

In 2017, The 519 provided in-kind space and resources for artistic workshops in support of the development of two process-driven projects, NU_FORuMS and Collecting Personal Archives. For Community Arts Space 2018, The 519 will again provide workshop space for a process-driven project, supporting the delivery of knowledge and skill-sharing serving the LGBTQ2S community in Toronto and beyond.

Akin Collective is a Toronto-based arts organization that provides affordable studio space as well as arts-based programming through its sister non-profit organization, Akin Projects. Akin provides space to nearly 250 visual artists, designers, and creatives in studios that maintain a friendly and inspiring atmosphere where people can work on creative endeavors and entrepreneurial undertakings of all kinds. Akin builds community through monthly art critiques, free or low-cost workshops, open studio events, gallery tours, exhibitions, as well as various other projects. During the Community Arts Space’s inaugural 2016 cycle, Akin Projects mounted Place/Setting, an exhibition hall project delivering all-ages clay-making workshops and community events. For Community Arts Space 2018, Akin will provide six months of free studio time at one of its studios, as well as kiln firing access.

For 25 years, Art Starts programs have benefited thousands of people living in marginalized Toronto neighbourhoods by providing a safe, supportive and inclusive environment for self-expression and creative collaboration. They afford opportunities for vulnerable people of all ages to contribute to the creative ecology of their neighbourhoods, using the arts to help end the negative cycles associated with marginalization and poverty.